Palestinian film 3000 Nights receives award at Mauret Film Festival in France

The award-winning film 3000 Nights scooped the Film Engagé Award at the Mauret Film Festival in France yesterday, according to a press release by MAD Solutions, a Cairo-based company that specialises in public relations and marketing for the film and entertainment industry.

Directed by Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, 3000 Nights is co-produced by Palestine, Jordan, France, UAE, Qatar and Lebanon. The film tells the story of Layal, a Palestinian school teacher who is sentenced to eight years in an Israeli prison, where she gives birth to a son.

3000 Nights premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, and has since garnered numerous awards at various festivals, including the Washington DC International Film Festival, where it scooped the Special Jury Award; the Valladolid Film Festival in Spain, where it won the Meeting Point Audience Award; and the Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden where it was awarded Best Feature Film.

The film is Palestine’s official submission to the Golden Globe Awards as well as Jordan’s official submission to the 2017 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Masri was born in Jordan, raised in Beirut, and moved to the United States to study film at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, from which she graduated in 1981.

The director then moved back to Beirut where she embarked on her filmmaking career. Social and political turmoil in the Middle East is often at the centre of her work.